Lost In No-Thesis-Land/The Start of Something New

I am still searching for my thesis.  I am lost in the valley that exists between theatre makeup and fine art sculpture.  I cannot decide whether to focus on sculptures of the human body, examining how the human figure is represented and portrayed through context and mediums in art history or explore the creative and transformative properties of makeup in the context of fine art.  My sculpture professor suggested that I combine makeup with my sculptures but I find myself at a complete loss to find the means of how to do so.
As I thought about my future in the theater world, I came to think about why makeup is used in the first place.  Makeup is used to create and enhance the characters on stage and build upon the allusion of their existence to the audience.  Ultimately, makeup is for a character. There are artists who create characters that are accepted as a valid form of art.  Local artist Abby Langdon, also known as abbydid, creates plush characters and creatures.  She recently was part of a show in the Reed Gallery at DAAP.
 My favorite piece of hers was Stompy McThumperton.

Me with Stompy.
(I was quite excited.)

You can see more of Langdon's work at www.abbydid.com

Thus came the inspiration for my most recent piece.  I wanted to create a character from my imagination that retained human figure traits.  Over a month ago, I found the skeleton of a baby bird on campus.  I kept in because I wanted to use it in an art piece because I have a strong fascination with skeletons.  Now I have the perfect art piece to include the skeleton.  I have been folding paper cranes for several days now, working towards my goal of 999.  I will use these cranes to construct a birdlike creature to act as the mother of this dead baby bird. The baby bird will rest in a hollow of the mother bird's pelvis.   Since this project is still in the developing stages and I cannot move on to construction until all the cranes are folded, I am unsure if I will be using actual makeup.  For now, I will refer to this project as Aves, which is the scientific name for birds.

In progress - Sketches and paper cranes

Baby Bird skeleton

I see this piece as a further exploration of the ties between theater and fine art, two of my greatest loves.   I will be posting in progress photos as soon as I finish the remaining 500+ cranes and am able to move on in sculpting this character.